Free Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle by Nora Deloach

said to Mama, “Let’s go.”
    Mama nodded, closed her door, and said good-bye to the two women politely. I turned the key in the ignition, patted the gas, and eased onto the road.We were finally going to Sugar Hill to visit the dead woman’s sister, Rose. Birdie and Koot stood by the side of the road, staring and silent.
    The air conditioner had somewhat cooled the car when I asked Mama, “You don’t buy Koot’s theory that Morgan is with Cricket’s people, do you?”
    Mama shrugged.
    “My money is on that goon who was driving the car on Cypress Creek road. And he wasn’t any kin to Cricket,” I continued.
    “How do you know that?” Mama asked.
    “Mama, be for real!” I snapped, not wanting to believe that Koot was right that Cricket’s people had Morgan hidden away.
    “Simone, calm down,” Mama said. “I’m not saying that Morgan is with any of Cricket’s people.”
    “It doesn’t make sense for Cricket’s relatives to be hiding Morgan. If, for instance, that baby saw her mother being killed, she wouldn’t be able to identify the murderer,” I pointed out.
    Mama nodded thoughtfully. “I’m thinking about Carrie Smalls’s suggestion that Rose is holding something back.” She paused. “If that is true, we can’t leave Rose’s house until we’ve found out if what she’s not telling us has anything to do with Cricket Childs’s death or Morgan’s whereabouts.”

CHAPTER
NINE
    T he fresh pork was seasoned with onion, garlic, and green pepper.… I knew, because its smell reminded me of how Mama cooked fresh neck bones for an hour before she added cleaned, cut collard greens.
    The aroma of what Rose was cooking sashayed through the door of her little kitchen, meandered to the front of the mobile home, and drifted on the wind until it passed the huge oak tree, the rosebush with red blossoms that had been planted in the middle of the swept yard, and the hedge of wild-flowers that stood between the trailers. The scent of the pork landed at my Honda’s window.
    I don’t know how this area became known as Sugar Hill. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and a fewcousins live in the fifteen mobile homes that sit together in a semicircle. The first trailer, the green-and-white double-wide, belonged to Rose Childs.
    Rose’s unpaved driveway arched at the left and ended at the rear of her mobile home. Mama pointed toward a small area surrounded by a chain-link fence in the field directly behind the trailer. “I’ve never noticed that cemetery before,” she admitted. “Take a look at it before I call Rose.”
    I got out of the car and walked up to the compact enclosure. The cemetery site was tidy. The grass had been recently mowed. There were no flowers. The gate opened easily. When I stepped inside the fence, I got the feeling that I’d entered a sanctuary. There was the normal stillness of death here, but there was something else, too.
    Each of the twelve small headstones carried the name of a child, an infant who had died within nine months of its birth.
    “Mama!” I cried out. “This is a babies’ graveyard—It might be where Midnight has been digging.”
    “Does it look like a dog has been digging about?” she called back. She sounded skeptical.
    She was right. The grass was undisturbed. There was nothing to suggest Midnight had been digging here. “I guess this is not the cemetery where Midnight got his skulls,” I admitted, disappointed. I fanned at the swarm of gnats that my perspiration had attracted.
    The back door of the green-and-white trailer opened and the screen door slammed shut. “Yo-ho,what you doing there!” Rose Childs protested loudly as she walked from the door of her trailer. She was a little woman, shorter than her dead sister Cricket. She wore a pale yellow dress, one that had been washed many times. Her hair was pulled back from her broad, moon-shaped face with a black elastic headband.
    I headed back to Mama. Rose and I reached the car at the same time. Her